VTR Forum

Dear Cow,
Does anyone think it would be useful to have some sort of general VTR forum for such posts as:

"My RS422 doesn't work, but my video is fine."
"I patched my video output into the deck's output, what's wrong?"
"I can't edit to tape because I don't know what the &*%$ I'm doing."
"I have the money to rent a really high end HD deck for $1200 a day. I don't want to read the free manual about how to operate it. I just want someone on Creative Cow to tell me where the power switch is."

Perhaps that could keep some of the VTR problem related posts out of the FCP and AJA forums where the problems aren't related to FCP or AJA, but with the users and their VTR's?

Ok. I guess my idea was partially in response to your post about trying to get the newbie type posts out of the FCP pro forum and into the FCP Basic forum. I post in the SRW5500 forum, but there isn't a DVW75, etc. forum. It was merely a suggestion.

My reply wasn't an attack on you, so please do not take it as one, Chad.

It is just that we even have leaders who participate in an area of the COW and know that there are forums for a specific tool or process, but even they refuse to use them because "I know that there's an area for this question, but I want to ask my 'homies' here in this forum, so..."

I wish there were a perfect answer ... but we are working on one that we think will lend a lot of muscle to the COW's users, and we are not talking about the stop-gap measure we are implementing in the FCP forum. (That one is just a bandage, the real mechanism comes later on, in Q1 2010.)

REPLY - no one is going to respond "put your Sony or Panasonic VTR into remote". If you have a problem with an AVID editing system, or AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox or MOTU forums with RS422 control, you post in these forums. These are legit questions, and will be answered based on your edit controller, or capture card, not a "VTR forum".

"I patched my video output into the deck's output, what's wrong?"

REPLY - this is for the Broadcast Video forum.

"I can't edit to tape because I don't know what the &*%$ I'm doing."

REPLY - same answer as above - if you can't edit to tape, its because you don't know how to use Adobe Premier, FCP, Sony Vegas, AVID, or your AJA, Blackamgic, Matrox or MOTU card. These forums exist right now. You should have enough sense to say "gee, I have an AJA card, and I can't edit to tape, what am I doing wrong" - and post on the AJA forum (or AVID forum, etc.).

"I have the money to rent a really high end HD deck for $1200 a day. I don't want to read the free manual about how to operate it. I just want someone on Creative Cow to tell me where the power switch is."

REPLY -
there is an Sony SRW forum. If you rent a BVW-75 (your example, not mine), and you are too lazy to read the manual on how to get your
time code to start at 00:58:30:00, I will fly to your location, and beat your ass. And if you were to rent this VTR from a rental house, and can't pick up the phone to your rental house, and say "I just spend $300 renting this deck from you guys, can you tell me how to set the time code", then you have some serious problems.

One of my best stories was back in NY, where an ad agency producer called me to find out why they could not see a picture on their TV monitor. The TV was not turned on. This person should not be employed - not only by an ad agency, but even as a maid in a motel chain. If you can't think, you should stand on the side of a highway exit, and beg for spare change.

Well at least I got a response outta you this time Bob :)
And I prompted some of your classic Zelin-esque anger towards the stupidity of people and some of their posts like the ones I described (non of those examples were of my own stupidity -my stupidity lies in other areas).
Flying across the country to beat people's asses, the lore of the unpowered monitor displaying black...
I love it.